If you fancy a bit of cozy escapism, Kamaeru: A Frog Refuge provides just that. With adorable graphics, casual gameplay and a goal to work towards, it is the perfect game to play while you drink a cup of tea, listen to some relaxing music, and rest. That said, I found myself tiring of Kamaru’s simplicity after a few hours in the game. New tasks, people and places are introduced sporadically in an attempt to keep you entertained, however they are all just similar enough to fall flat and instead reminded me of just how similar they are to previous additions.
Developed by Humble Reeds and published by Armor Games, Kamaeru: A Frog Refuge tells the story of Cleo and her childhood best friend Axel as they restore the wetland near where they grew up. Bonding over their shared love of frogs, they seek to bring as many different species and colors to the area as possible, logging each new entry in a journal and capturing photos of them to store in an album (with quite limited picture storage space). The story is largely secondary to the gameplay, however there are occasional visual novel style cutscenes which let you know about key story beats.
While Kamaeru has dubbed itself a farming simulator, it is much closer to a creature collection game – think Pokemon but without the lore and trainer battles. Frogs are distinctive in both species and color and can be collected by photographing them, breeding them or taming them by feeding them insects. The breeding mechanic in particular is a frustrating one and it can take several attempts to get the frog you wanted. Breeding is done through a Naughts and Crosses-style mini-game which asks the player to pick two frogs and attempt to combine traits by making a line of three. Unfortunately, the AI you play against is obtuse and tends to place completely random tiles in random places making it irritatingly hard to get to choose more than one trait.
You can see whether a frog has been collected or not based on how it appears in the world, with new frogs having little lines above their head and tamed frogs having hearts. This is super helpful and with so many frogs to collect it can be hard to keep track of which ones you have already photographed for your journal. If you take any particularly artsy or entertaining photos you can choose to also store them in your photo album, however this has quite limited storage and with how quickly the frogs can disappear it is sometimes hard to line up the perfect shot.
One way of summoning frogs is by placing furniture around the refuge. You are first introduced to the concept by Axel, who gives Cleo 20 coins to buy a bathtub from his caravan. After all, frogs love bathtubs. There doesn’t appear to be any rhyme or reason to what furniture needs to be placed, but it is pretty cute seeing the frogs posing on them.
There is a fairly decent range of furniture items to choose from however, honestly, to me the offering falls short. A few beds, some different chairs, various crates and shelves that you can’t place anything on. My favourite items were the ones geared more towards children such as a play tent, sandbox and inflatable pool. These seemed like the most fun and really fit with the idea of a playful place for frogs. More so than some wooden boxes and an armchair anyway. You can change the colors of some items which did help make things feel a bit more fresh, and additional things were unlocked as gameplay progressed, however I still feel as though the furniture offerings could be more varied.
My favourite part of the experience, however, was by far the wetland restoration. I found this was developed a fair bit in the final game versus the demo and it is the closest the game comes to farming. When you first jump into Kamaeru the wetland is dry and barren, but with some love it becomes a home for wildlife (including frogs of course). This is the main place for you to catch bugs to tame frogs, as well as providing you with resources to turn into sellable items. You can unlock different shaped ponds, some of which can be merged together to create larger bodies of water, plants, insect hotels and bee hives. All of these go towards either increasing the wetlands bioscore or giving you more items to sell.
Several resources gathered from the wetlands need to be processed in order to be able to sell them, and new ways to do this unlock as you progress through the game. In my demo impression I noted my disappointment that every cooking mini-game was the same. While this has not changed in the full release, there are now a range of different crafting types which come with their own unique mini-games. In practice, however, they really aren’t all that different. To make jam or sweets you add ingredients to a pot, push a button, move some mirrors to direct a light and click when a dot enters a circle to make extra product. To make paper goods you add ingredients to a funnel, push a button, click a few times when a dot enters a circle and then pull a level. Ultimately, the only real differences are aesthetic. My biggest gripe with the cooking mini-games is with the bonus items. No matter how many products you put through at once, whether it is one or 35, the number of bonus items you can get is always the same or increases by a minimal amount. This means it is far more effective to make products one at a time, but this is so tedious that I eventually gave up altogether. The fact that going one at a time can be the difference between getting 40 jam jars and 13 jam jars is incredibly frustrating, especially when you are almost encouraged to make the maximum amount you can by the game.
In my opinion, Kamaeru has fallen short in part because I played it a lot in a short space of time. Kamaeru is relaxing, cute and helped to settle my brain after a long day, but spending more than an hour at a time tending to the refuge, selling jam and paper cups and photographing a few new frog friends felt tedious. I think it would be a lot more enjoyable if played in a similar manner to Cozy Grove – check in every now and then, wind down and enjoy a cute but very casual game.
In small chunks, I think Kamaeru and its charming graphics, simple gameplay and relaxing atmosphere could be a real, cozy gem.
Megan played Kamaeru: A Frog Refuge on PC with a review copy.
